You don’t have to bake with pumpkin to get cute, fall-worthy treats. You can take any yeasted dough and make it into an autumnal-shaped pumpkin with this quick trick.
TikTok user elenaa.jss shows that bread can be made seasonally cute with a string. After the dough is rolled and portioned out, you lay it onto a baking sheet. Place the string under the portion of the dough, wrap it around the dough, and tie it on top. Repeat this process on the same piece of dough three to four times.
You want to make sure that the string is slightly snug around the dough.
After the dough rests and proofs again, it’s brushed with an egg wash or a bit of butter and baked until golden. The result is pumpkin-y cuteness! The strings press into the dough as it rises and bakes, making indentations similar to pumpkins. You could make it look even more pumpkin-like by sticking a bit of broken pretzel into the top to give the pumpkin a stem.
You can watch the full reel from start to finish here.